


light up the sky

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Stardust - All Media Types, Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Background Chirrut/Baze - Freeform, Cassian Andor as Tristan Thorn, Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus as the Captains Shakespeare, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Jyn Erso as Yvaine, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, instead of three witches we have three Empire baddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 15:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9663494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian Andor now knows he will do anything and everything just to tear Jyn Erso away from that altar. He'd sacrifice himself on her behalf.Fortunately, the star that is also Jyn Erso has a Plan of her own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this gorgeous gifset](http://zombeesknees.tumblr.com/post/120394169560/a-forehead-lean-and-a-forehead-kiss-this-is) of Tristan and Yvaine from the movie version of Stardust.
> 
> Writing music: "Rule the World" from the Stardust film, and the Prelude from the Final Fantasy franchise.

Cassian could hear the whispers in his ears, and he thought back quickly to the long evenings that alternated between courtly dancing and flashing swordplay -- passing from one Captain-Guardian’s hands to another, from Chirrut to Baze and then again, whirling and whirling to the encouraging whoops of their soldiers, till the waltz seemed to blur into the martial drums, around and around and around like the insistent bright hot beat of his heart and the pulse of his blood.

He knew that he could trust the way that the earth moved beneath his feet, one sure step after the other -- knew that he could trust the weapons that had been forged just for him, the blade that blazed bright blue in his hands and the gun that waited ready at his belt. Masterworks, those two weapons, forged for him by those who were his friends, those who had become his family in the years of his missing ancestors and forebears. Tremulous Bodhi and sarcastic Kay -- who had both nevertheless poured their immense skill into the sword and into the gun -- and with those weapons Cassian had managed to survive this far.

Had even managed to survive two of the most terrifying fights of his life, one after the other in rapid succession, and the proof lay behind him, in the shadows of the vast marble hall. Two wizard-corpses: Tarkin, the eldest of the three brothers; and Krennic, the youngest. The one torn to pieces by his own prisoners who had also been his own horrific subjects of experimentation. The other, brash and too smug, tangled up in his own traps, and now wetting those ropes and knots with his own blood.

Still at the altar at the junction of the sweeping stairs stood the brother who survived: Vader.

The most ruthless of the three, it had been more than whispered. The brother who was spoken of openly as the legend who was shrouded in death. The brother who ruled in truth, for it was by his immense strength in the magical arts that the other two had held throne and crown and staff. No wizard should have been able to wear armor. Vader was the exception to that rule, and the years had left the material of that armor -- the many pieces of it that covered his body – forever stained and forever tarnished.

Cassian wondered, and not for the first time, if it wasn’t a cold withering contempt that he could see in those armor-shrouded eyes. Even he knew of Vader’s immense power coupled with immense hatred of his own brothers, and Cassian was only a few weeks removed from the farm on which he and his friends the Damerons had labored for so many years.

And bound upon that altar, with her dress shredded at the hems by the hailstorm of fire and power and shattered glass that had ended with Tarkin and Krennic’s deaths, the mysterious star, the girl who called herself Jyn. Heavy gold chain around her neck onto which a rough-hewn crystal as big as Cassian’s own fist was strung, the same crystal that had fallen with her out of the sky, although she said that it had not been hers and never had been. A crystal that belonged elsewhere, Cassian thought, and he had had the vague thought of sending it on to its rightful owners, just as soon as he could find his courage.

Courage to keep moving forward. Courage to keep fighting. Courage to honor his friends who had ushered him onto his quest and, as friends do, kept propelling him forward. Courage to speak to Jyn and tell her what he was truly carrying in his heart --

“I grow tired of this endless posturing,” he heard Vader declare, and Cassian gritted his teeth. Drew the pistol and cocked it, knowing Jyn had carefully loaded it with its special ammunition, a series of crystalline bullets. Brandished his sword one more time for luck and for the strength that he needed to rush forward.

Vader, loping forward with lethal grace and speed, and as he moved his hands a sword of coruscating flame appeared from out of nowhere. It blazed so brightly that Cassian cried out even as he parried it -- the heat that radiated from it in tremendous waves scorching his sleeves and his hands before he could leap away and try to fight off the gorge that rose in his throat as his skin froze and burned at the same time.

But he had parried the first blow, and now he was getting ready to fire his first shot, and that gave him a little hope. Just a little. Not enough to see him through to the end of the fight, he thought, for Vader was far too powerful and Cassian was only one man, bereft of the spark that created Vader’s magic.

One man, but not alone, he thought, and he kept his eyes locked on Jyn at all times even as he danced savagely and desperately for his life. Danced to stay ahead of the sweep of Vader’s sword and the blasting bright bolts that rained destruction upon the already ravaged hall.

Around, Cassian thought. He needed to circle around and make his way to Jyn. Vader wouldn’t dare harm her and that was the cold and awful truth, for she needed to be alive and vital until the very last second before her throat was slit open and her heart torn out for Vader to consume, and attain eternal life and eternal power. Cassian needed to get to Jyn -- needed to tell her that he had given her his heart and the foolish brief life that he had -- 

Too close! Crackling light that blinded Cassian and made him scream in pain -- he threw himself backward and saw sparks as he bounced off the floor -- heard Jyn’s cry, pure snarled rage, and his ears rang with pain and the inevitable silence of his defeat -- he brought the blade around and didn’t know what he was thinking, for how could he hope to sweep the power away from her when his blade was only a blade, only metal torn from the earth and the sky -- 

Light filled the hall, cutting him off from everything except the wild beat of his heart and a loud ripping sound -- the smell of blood choking him, and he would never forgive himself, for the moment his vision came back he’d see Jyn’s body on the stone, battered and cold and lifeless --

A single cry! A pulse of power that drove him down again to his knees!

Cassian made himself open his eyes and --

Jyn.

He was looking at the back of her dress in its rich blues and greens -- at the tattered skirts and the strands of her hair that flew wildly in the silent power that rolled off her, power that felt like an absolutely silent gale, pulling him to his feet.

“You reveal yourself at last, Lady Stardust,” and that was Vader, and was he actually saluting Jyn with that impossible sword of flames? “In truth I would be most honored to duel you. My brothers were tiresome and this man in whose company you have come is naught but a trifle.”

Cassian blinked.

Jyn had a title?

“You are the trifle, Vader,” was Jyn’s reply: and that was the second shock. Quiet words, but Cassian felt the very earth tremble as she spoke. While she continued to speak. “You know not what you would have unleashed, had your power succeeded in destroying me.”

“I know that I still will overcome you,” Vader said. “And with you gone, it will be but child’s play to crumble that man into dust.”

“Then everything that you know is wrong.”

And, unbelievably, Jyn -- Lady Stardust -- turned her back on Vader.

Still on his knees, Cassian looked up into her eyes and -- she was the girl who had blundered through their first waltzes, ungainly only with her own laughter. The girl who had blistered his ears with scoldings over the first days of their acquaintance. He had never thought her voice to grate or to rasp, though she had been exceedingly and creatively rude to him. He had only seen the scattered glittering pinpoints of light in her dark hair, and the corresponding freckles like shadows marching in lines over the bridge of her nose. He had only seen the unabashed delight of her as they stood at the very prow of Chirrut and Baze’s skyship, fingers wreathed in the powerful playful lightning that leaped from cloud to cloud. He had only seen the fierce wonder of her gaze as it was directed at delicate blue flowers, or at the placidly shimmering waters of the great inland sea on which shores he had been born, or the verdant sweep of the hills that fell away to his own distant patch of tilled soil on a black-earthed plain.

And here she was, with her back to her enemy and her sparkling eyes on him, and she was speaking to him: “Are you all right?”

He forced himself to stand. The sword was not made to be a crutch -- and yet he used it as one. Hobbled the two steps that would allow him to meet her outstretched hand with his own. “No,” he said, and he owed her his honesty, his allegiance, his everything.

Her smile grew, only a little, but enough to warm him from the inside out. “As soon as we’re done here, you must see to your wounds.”

Movement, behind her, and Cassian was torn: look away from her smile, and try to fight off Vader’s attack? Look at her and watch her fall? Close his eyes and deny all of this was happening, even the tears that blazed paths down his cheeks?

Jyn’s arms around him. He opened his eyes against the fabric that was gathered off her shoulder, filmy and rustling and crisscrossed with golden stitches. Her hand at the back of his neck, fingers looped into his hair. Her voice nearly in his ear, soft and strong. “I am made of stardust. I am the heart of the night. I create light in darkness. Even with your eyes closed, I know you’ll be able to point to me, because you know that I am still there. 

“Tell me, Cassian Andor, what do stars do?”

He had no answer to give her.

Fortunately, she supplied her own: 

“Shine.”

He closed his eyes, and the pain and the tears and the fear washed away in sweetly lapping waves of warmth, as though she beat to the pulse of life and light itself, and he wrapped his arms around her slender waist and held on with everything that he had.

He almost missed the high thin helpless echo of defeated futility -- nearly didn’t recognize the voice as belonging to Vader.

He thought, hoped, wished, that the caress on his cheek was Jyn, kissing him, a final benediction and a goodbye.

Silence in the hall, silence that rang in every inch of his body. Silence and stillness, more profound than the deepest night in winter.

He could hear himself breathing, shaky, and unmistakably still alive -- and he jerked upright. Pulled away from Jyn.

Stared.

For she was smiling, and from head to toe she was wrapped in the colors of light.

She had been talking about stars, and -- 

A star!

Stars were made of stardust!

“You’re a star,” Cassian whispered, and he felt his knees buckle again, and he reached out to her, desperately.

Her hands, lifting him up. “Yes.”

He looked down. Away. “You told me this, when I first bound you, and I did not listen to you.”

“I can’t thank you for the part where you dragged me around,” was her response, tinkling with sparkling laughter. “But if you hadn’t bound me, I never would have known such adventures. Never would have known people like -- Kay and Bodhi and Master Chirrut and Master Baze.”

Her fingertips ghosted on his skin, against his jaw, gently moving him to look her in the face. 

“Never would have known you.”

And for the first time -- Cassian understood that spark in her eyes.

Stardust, and starlight caught in stardust.

“Jyn,” he said, and he -- he couldn’t help himself anymore. He bowed, just a little, and savored the soft sigh that fell into the spaces between them when he touched his forehead to hers.

“Cassian,” he heard her say, and his name had never sounded like an entreaty before.

He closed his eyes and touched her cheeks with his fingertips. Kissed her forehead and heard the sudden hitch in her breath -- a hitch that sounded like permission.

Still, he asked: “May I?”

“Cassian please.”

And kissing her -- her mouth in its sweet warm smiling curve, before she leaned into him -- was like falling so naturally into a breath, into a spark, into a sigh.

The kiss ended, and he was about to ask for another -- but she was folding something against his chest. He looked down, and -- the crystal on its chain was in his hands. “What?”

“It’s not mine,” she said, again. “We need to find out whose it is.”

“We,” he echoed. He liked the sound of that.

And then the crystal suddenly blazed bright red against his skin.

Marching boots, overenthusiastic cadence, and the doors to the hall flew open. Light, exploding, and when Cassian was done being dazzled he saw -- the others. Kay and Bodhi, the latter beaming in a way that filled his face with mirthful lines. Chirrut and Baze, hand in hand as always -- and it was the former who pointed to the crystal and said, “So it was you after all, and you all along: the true heir to the throne of this kingdom. For the spell that was placed upon that jewel says that it will regain its true color when it is held in the hand of its rightful owner.”

A pulse of power filled the room once again and he almost reached for his sword -- almost fell into a fighting crouch at Jyn’s side as she sparked with immense light once again -- and this time one of the last remaining intact mirrors shattered, gently and soundlessly, to release a woman with deep dark eyes. 

The last time Cassian had seen her, he’d been no more than a mewling little boy, running away into a night full of dreadful howls -- 

“Hello, son.”

“Lady Carida,” Baze said, as he swept a formal bow. “It is good to see you restored to your own form once again.”

“And I am glad to be here, to see my son again, and to meet his beloved.”

Cassian unashamed, fell forward, weeping into his mother’s skirts.

Jyn’s hands on his shoulders, steadying and not judging. 

How he got from a ravaged hall to a great palace filled with thousands of flickering lights, he had no actual idea -- and neither could he explain the road-torn coat and clothes that had somehow been changed into rich cloth-of-silver and a crown adorned with the great red jewel. He still had his weapons about him; only their scabbards and holsters had changed.

And there were Shara and Kes sitting in the first row, next to Kay and Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze, all whooping and clapping for him, happy and exuberant.

He knelt before his mother to do her honor -- and she in turn swept him a courtesy, and placed a familiar chain across his hands.

This he knew what to do with: he looped the chain around and around Jyn’s throat: Jyn who stood beside him, dressed in cloth-of-gold, and the stars in the sky sparkled in her hair and in her eyes.

He would follow her all the rest of his days, for she was the star that lit up all of his skies.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
